Watch: Man enters active runway at Mumbai Airport causing go arounds!

Mumbai Airport always gets the short end of the stick in spite of being one of the busiest airports in the world. An inland airport right in the centre of the city, the airport shares its wall with slums which have not been removed for many many years as the airport has grown exponentially in terms of traffic. Today, August 22, 2019, there was a security lapse that should give the airport security and airport authorities a lesson in not letting this happen again.

Initial reports talked of a man having entered the airport on the active runway 27 at about 13:45 hours, and causing flights to go around. For instance, here is flight 6E342 performing Hyderabad to Mumbai, and had to go around due to a man walking on the active runway. (FlightRadar24)

6E342 on August 22, 2019. Image via FlightRadar24

That was not the only case however. This person walked over in front of an aircraft which was waiting on Taxiway holdpoint N1. Watch this video shot by a passenger from a plane holding behind them before he was picked up by security personnel.

Luckily, the pilot of SpiceJet SG634 shut down engines otherwise this person would have been ingested by the engines and it would have been all over.

Here is a statement issued by the airport.

SpiceJet aircraft SG634 was holding on taxiway N1 reported the presence of a man on runway 27. He was picked up from the runway by CISF. The runways scheduled for weekly maintenance activities twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Accordingly operations are shifted to alternate runway.

Truly, this is horrible news if this could happen in broad daylight. There could be massive repercussions here for the security of the Mumbai Airport if anyone could just drop in through the fence at the airport.

Comments

Thats Insane ! They are going to be the laughing stock of the world ! The man is really lucky that the pilot switched the engines off ! Still in shock that security could be breached at such a busy and important airport for India !